Wednesday, November 15, 2017

The daily newspaper: It’s not fake news

Quite often I speak to large groups
at the factory or in the classroom – it could be folks like Leadership Niagara,
higher-level students at UB, or fifth graders. When discussing some of the more
important tools for leading an organization, making themselves career-ready or
being good citizens, I always mention that they need to read a newspaper, or a
few of them, every day.

Their eyes always perk up with curiosity when I say that.

It could be because the topic of
acquired contemporary knowledge is rarely discussed as a trait of leadership or
citizenship. Or, it may be that a good many people have a rather disdainful
view of newspapers and news in general because of the boisterous “Fake News”
propaganda spread by this President or the similar yet far more subtle
undertones from his predecessor. Or, it may be that my audience doesn’t read
the paper once a day, let alone once a month, a behavior that has become the
norm in this age of the Internet and the accessibility of immediate – albeit
abbreviated and suspect – information.

To allay their curiosity and warm them up to the daily read, I always lay out
just how crucial a newspaper is for good management and good activism. Every
leader, head of household, and engaged citizen must be a Renaissance Man,
knowing a little bit (or a lot) about a wide variety of subjects. To
effectively do your job and make the appropriate decisions in business
(finances, capital investment, product development, and marketing) and in your
personal life (savings, investment, buying, and the American concept of
self-governance) you have to be aware of what’s happening all around our world,
from your neighborhood to some far-flung foreign land.

Why? The global economy and modern technology have made the world a smaller
place and we’re all interconnected. What happens elsewhere will set off a
domino effect that affects you personally and professionally in the short-term
or long-term, even halfway around the world.

And, it should be noted that everything can affect you. A flood in Australia
can drive up wheat prices, doing the same to prices at the grocery store in
Niagara Falls. A tsunami in Japan can ultimately shut down production lines
here in the States, harming your job. The town council’s vote on infrastructure
might make your water bill go up. Changing consumer beliefs might have a major
impact on your employer’s operations. The list is endless.

By being in the know regarding these matters – the major and the minor - you
can adjust your operations and your expenditures accordingly, well in advance
of your competitors and neighbors. Knowledge is power.

I always tell the crowd that they can’t use television news and the Internet as
shortcuts. Broadcast news is flawed in that you spend a half–to-one hour in
front of the tube and a good portion of that airtime is commercials, while the
national news stations (like CNN and Fox News) are agenda driven and over-kill
some of the most unimportant stories while putting issues of actual importance
on the back-burner. Likewise, the Internet does the same, promoting really
inane and false garbage. That’s where “Fake News” comes from. The problem with
the Internet, too, is that its users use it as a filter and scan the headlines,
focusing only on cute, horrific or popularized topics.

The newspaper, on the other hand, is created with standards and in its printed
form puts the entire world, from a variety of perspectives, in your hand. Local
and world news, business, sports and culture are all right there. In the same
amount of time you would have spent watching the TV, you can ingest a whole
newspaper (or a few) and know so much more than you would have learned
elsewhere.

You don’t need a degree to be educated. You just need a newspaper like this
one. Newspapers can - and do – make you healthy, wealthy and wise.

Chances are that you’re reading this
column in ink so you know that mantra quite well. But, you should share that
belief with your friends and coworkers and get your kids started on it at a
young age (I started reading papers in the fourth grade).

We’ll all be better off for it, for
an educated people are a strong people and a successful people.